It was impossible to sleep. Martin threw out his bloody clothes, wrapped himself in covers, and searched the house for a pencil and paper. Something had been roused in him. He couldn’t fathom how Nigel knew about the machine, but honestly, he didn’t care. The machine suddenly mattered again, to one person at least. That person was a slightly sadistic boy who got his information from animals, but he was also a boy who looked to the future. So few in Xibalba did.
Martin quickly found a sketchbook in an upstairs bedroom, but he couldn’t locate a pencil anywhere. Sparked by a memory, he descended into the basement. He hadn’t been down there much. It was the dollhouse that bothered him most. It imbued the basement with a strange, almost holy significance, though the exact nature of it was impossible to decipher. Of course, Martin knew whose basement this had once been, whose house in which he had chosen to live. The others reminded him of it daily. Some shrugged it off as coincidence, but most seemed committed to a cautious unease. Whenever he told one of them his address, eyes sent him the same message: Who the heck do you think you are?
Martin thought he was a person who would change things. At least, that was what he thought now. He needed a pencil to prove it.
The coffee table in the basement had a thin drawer. Martin pulled it open. Just as he’d remembered from the last time he’d snuck a peek inside, there was a pencil sitting atop an instruction booklet about how to build an ant farm. When he snagged the pencil, he knocked the instructions to the side, revealing a book beneath them.
Martin set the pencil down on the table and fished the book out. It was a small leather-bound book, not much bigger than a pack of cards. It had no title on the cover, but what it did have was a sticker, the same sticker Martin had seen on the trail on his way to Xibalba. Skull, crossbones—the Jolly Roger. Martin opened it to the first page, where he found an inscription, written in ghostly graphite.
The Life and Times of Kelvin Rice
He nearly dropped the book. This was a diary. This was Kelvin’s diary! Outside of the Internet, it was nearly impossible to find information about Kelvin. People rarely wanted to talk about him. Yet here was an unedited view into his mind.
Doodles of knights, monsters, curvy women, and aliens dominated the opening pages. The first entry was only a couple of sentences.
Tyler said that diaries are for girls. I don’t think that’s true, but I’m still going to keep this one to myself.
After that, the entries were longer, but not by much. And there were no indications of when they were written. They were simply a series of thoughts and observations, scribbled out dusty and quick.
Skipped school today. Aunt Bonnie doesn’t care. She’s got her mysteries and “a bottle to get to the bottom of.” Spent most of my time in the basement carving a talisman out of wood. A talisman is like something that keeps demons out. Hang it up and scare them off. People have been doing it for tons of years, so it’s got to work.
I’m killing myself over what I could have done today, cuz Tyler was smoking behind the shed after last bell and he didn’t know I was hiding in the bushes and I really wanted to get some dog crap on a stick and jab him with it, but I knew he would pummel me. I bite the side of my lip sometimes cuz I get so angry and even if it bleeds at least it’s something.
Marjorie still treats me like a kid, like we’re in the Land of Neverseens or whatever. Sometimes she says, “The hole beneath the quarry leads to the heart of the world and it’s where we should meet if we get split up.” It makes me know her meds are low. I think she says it cuz her dad got lost and died in there and that kind of stuff sticks with you forever. Anyway, I’ve checked it out. It’s blocked up with bricks and wood, but I bet a pickax would do. I don’t believe her, you know, but I think it’s cool that one of the entrances to the Mayan underworld was a cave, and it’s sort of like a cave in there, and so I wonder if it might hold something. Secrets. The stuff they don’t tell you about in books.
There are girls in my classes who I look at and I wonder how it is that someone kissed them or that someone will kiss them someday. I know you only have to have a party and invite them and play those stupid bottle and closet games. There have to be other ways. I don’t write poetry. I don’t throw baseballs. If I die and I haven’t kissed a girl, is there a place they send guys like me? Ha!
In submarines? Through caves? By rocket ship? Somehow …
That was where it ended. Martin checked the binding for remnant bits of paper. He ran his fingers across the blank pages, feeling for indentations. He searched for anything that might indicate there had once been more to the diary. It was a worthless endeavor. This was all there was. A few pages of writing and nothing else. Still, the last entry, the last words, struck him hard.
When the morning arrived, it found Martin sitting at the kitchen table, sketching. He hardly left his chair that day. By evening, his notebook was full, and he began tearing pages out of it and stuffing them in large envelopes. With a Magic Marker, he wrote a name on each envelope. Then, weary and a little nervous, he put the envelopes under his arm and left the house.
He went straight to Sigrid’s. When she opened the door, she was wiping sweat from the back of her neck with a hand towel.
“Sorry to bother you,” Martin said.
“No worries,” Sigrid said. “I am enjoying my new treadmill, that is all. Thanks to you, of course.”
“Can you deliver some messages for me?” Martin asked, presenting the envelopes.
“It will be my pleasure,” Sigrid said, grabbing them and looking at the names.
“They’re … top … secret,” Martin explained. “And urgent.”
“Then I must go now, yeah?” she said with a smile.
Martin thanked her and returned home and slept for more than twelve hours.